Sunday, January 1, 2012

SMART PROGRAMS READ SHAKESPEARE: Happy new year! In recognition of the approaching robot war -- didn't the Mayans predict this for 2012, or am I mistaken? -- a "Studio 360" radio segment called "Smart Computers Read Shakespeare." MIT computer scientist Patrick Winston (pictured) says that, in order for computer intelligence to become creative, we have to teach it to understand stories. This segment is part of an interesting episode called "Are Computers Creative?" Also pertinent to narrative is the segment on 420-character stories.

LITERATURE ON TWITTER: More on the topic of ultra-short literature. An RW Deutsch Foundation blog post from this past summer on "Serious Twitterature: The Online Future of the Novel." The post explores how a novel, albeit a relatively short one, can be written or released over the course of time in 140-character tweets. The author writes, "As a forum for new types of literary work, Twitter's greatest asset is its ability to capture a story in real-time" -- but that's also weakness, because works produced on Twitter are particular to their time.

About Me

NOTE: PLEASE VISIT www.workingnarratives.org for weekly blog posts on storytelling and social change. "Inside Stories" is only updated very rarely now, but please read the archives for posts on the many forms of storytelling -- from journalism to genealogy to psychology to film to literature to walking tours and more. Also check out the podcast archive! You can email me at paulvdc [at] gmail [dot] com. Thanks for visiting!